How to Ace a Job Interview

When it comes to interviewing, here are the top 5 strategies we’ve found to improve your chances for getting hired:

1. Show how you think. People aren’t really looking for an answer to their question. They’re looking for your thought process. They want to know how you approach a problem and arrive at a conclusion. Hiring managers are interested in your reasoning skills — so the next you get a challenging question, start thinking out loud!

2. Give clues to who you are. Think about hiring a babysitter. Even with a stellar resume, you’d still want to interview the person. Why? Because you don’t trust them yet. You want to get a sense of their values & character. It’s the same in any job interview. People want to know who you are. You can show them by referencing books you’re reading, hobbies you’re exploring, and ideas you’re pondering. Drop little nuggets about yourself that reflect who you are as a person. (see an example)

3. Share your unique cross-section. This is invaluable advice that I first learned from Ramit Sethi. Can you identify the cross-section of skills that make you stand out? For example, an engineer with exceptional communication skills. A financial advisor with a background in human psychology. What is the combination of attributes that separate you from all the other qualified candidates?

4. Tell stories that show your character. Think of times when you helped a team member or served as a mentor. You want to scan your memory for stories that show you in action — moments where you resolved a conflict, navigated a challenging scenarios, or simply went above and beyond what was required.

5. Breathe before every question. Take a breath to settle the mind and scan your brain for ideas. It’s important to show that you’re comfortable pausing. Remember, people who pause are perceived as more confident and thoughtful. Plus, once you start speaking, people will forget about the pause altogether.

You have to care about what you say.

You have to care about what you say.

But you don’t need to be vulnerable. Or share your secrets. Or talk about your private life.

In fact, Steve Jobs tells a great story on teamwork. And it’s not personal or vulnerable at all.

But most people don’t tell great stories.

They skip over the best parts. They summarize the best details.

They speak from the head, not the heart. They tell the facts instead of reliving the moment.

There is a wall between what actually happened . . . and what they’re willing to share.

And that wall ruins their story.

Ultraspeaking is the place to study this wall.

It’s a space to practice getting closer to your content. Because, the closer you get, the more connected you feel.

And the more connected YOU feel, the more connected WE feel to you and what you’re sharing.

And isn’t that what speaking is really about?

Meet Ultraspeaking’s 9 Founding Coaches

5 years ago, we (Michael & Tristan) took on the craziest project of our lives, making it to the finals of the World Championship of Public Speaking with no prior training.

In the 4 years that followed, we gradually uncovered what would become known as the Ultraspeaking method — arguably the quickest and most effective way to learn to speak effortlessly in any scenario.

In 2020, we started training our best students to become coaches. They went through pain-staking bootcamps with us, fine-tuning every detail of what it takes to lead a student to transformation.

Today, we’d like to single out the 9 founding coaches who paved the groundwork for Ultraspeaking’s courses and curriculum.

If you’ve been lucky enough to get coached by one of them, you know how incredibly talented and skilled these individuals are.

Meet Ultraspeaking's 9 Founding Coaches

Mark Bossert

Mark is an elite coach who is passionate about the science of high-performance and the art of NLP. We love his ability to tell stories and make people feel. His coaching, just like his speaking . . . speaks for itself: How Ultraspeaking changed my life

You are an insanely good speaker and coach. I imagine you get told that a lot. I particularly appreciate your natural flow. Also your willingness to talk candidly from personal experience, your detailed feedback, and your suggestions for how to practice.

Just finished my final session with Mark. I literally feel a different person! He has really helped me get over my phobia of public speaking and I’m itching to get out there and do some talking!

Benjamin Lee

Benjamin is a human powerhouse. He takes training to the next level, both in fitness and in speaking. He was the first person to do 50 rapid-fire analogies in a row, which was completely insane at the time.

Ben brings his experience as a preacher and podcaster to help people thrive in their prepared (and unprepared) speaking.

I am really happy with the final result. I feel much more confident in my public speaking ability, and the tools I have learnt are fantastic. Benjamin was an excellent facilitator. He created such a safe learning environment for me. He was very supportive all the way through, and he really challenged me to get better. I felt we really gelled, and I would recommend him to anyone. He is a great teacher with such a gentle nature.

Shelley Goldstein

Shelley spearheaded Beyond Fundamentals – the advanced course on Ultraspeaking. She is an expert in marketing, sales, and communication in the professional world. Shelley’s specialty is helping you level up your pitches, interviews, and presentations at work.

After Ultraspeaking, I was able to crack Google and am currently working as an Engineering Manager. Got a huge bump in my paycheck. Ultraspeaking definitely played a role in this success. My confidence became 10x after Fundamentals (especially your 1:1 was life-changing for me - and I am not exaggerating here)!

Two weeks ago I volunteered to lead an abnormal situation management team at work. It was a high profile opportunity to demonstrate a lot of the things I have learned from your coaching, and it went well. I received some nice feedback from management about my willingness to volunteer to coordinate the communications for the abnormal situation (people historically haven't done that here)! Super fun to put what I've learned into practice.

Santosh Yadav

Santosh is a storytelling expert and co-lead coach of Beyond Fundamentals. His quarterly storytelling workshops are the most popular seminars at Ultraspeaking. Santosh has a talent for giving direct feedback in a beautiful way.

I have learned so much from Santosh and I’ve had multiple breakthroughs in our sessions so far. I’m so impressed by his knowledge, hush dedication, his coaching style, his generosity during this time, and his skills as a speaker and a storyteller. Beyond all the above, which is barely giving it justice, his ability to build connections, to tailor his style to match his students, and his humility and curiosity are incredible traits of his that I’m in awe of and hope to emulate one day.

Sudhan Raju

Sudhan is a natural improviser and knows how to unlock a person’s confidence and creativity on-the-fly. His quarterly workshops on Effortless Speaking teach you how to use energy and musicality to make your speaking come alive.

Working with coach Sudhan in my small group has been incredibly helpful. He was consistently giving me kind and encouraging feedback while also pushing me outside my comfort zone "just enough". He helped me get comfortable with not knowing what I'm going to say and find the confidence to speak before I think!

I arrived at Ultraspeaking as someone who couldn’t think of many things as off-putting as speaking in front of an audience - even with a script. With his warmth, empathy, and encouragement, Sudhan helped me detach from the need to be perfect, to take a leap out into the unknown, to speak from the heart without knowing what you’re going to say. Hands down one of the better courses and communities I have had the pleasure of taking part in.

Ken Fontenot

Ken is a U.S. Marine Corps Veteran, former school teacher, and pastor. His speaking skills are only rivaled by his coaching acumen. Ken has a gift for teaching people to unlock their self-confidence through speaking and storytelling.

Hey Michael, Ken has continued to be absolutely fantastic - most recently coached me through a 'commencement speech' which went great. He's a master of his craft and a superb coach.

Aman Chopra

Aman, aka “the chopster” is the type of guy you’d want as your coach and your best man. He is upbeat with an indomitable spirit. His specialty is charisma . . . and knowing how to make people feel naturally engaging on (and off) camera.

Aman’s a GOAT-level coach 🐐! Combining a standup comic’s killer timing with a Buddhist’s attention and presence, Aman championed me every step along the Ultraspeaking journey. He’s an amazing listener who inspired me to improvise well beyond what I thought possible. Never settling for anything ordinary, he accelerated our learning the moment he sensed we were up for the challenge. Kind, hilarious and an absolutely boss level coach! 🔥

I attended the five week Fundamentals Cohort where Aman was my coach. I enjoyed my time immensely during the Cohort. Our classes were filled with fun games with lot of opportunities to practice and real time feedback. I always enjoyed Aman's sense of humor and interesting observations which helped me identify my hidden strengths and break the limiting beliefs in my head. What really set him apart is the way he made me feel safe to make mistakes and helped me overcome my awkwardness . I went from a hesitant conversationalist and overthinker to embracing the Ultraspeaking philosophy of - Speak before you think. The improvements made by me were noticed not only by me but every one around me. I would highly recommend Aman as your coach.

Pim Ruhe

Pim is a lead coach at Ultraspeaking Fundamentals and the definition of a remarkable human. Talk to him and you’ll sense the good vibes right away. Get coached by him and you’ll feel the difference. Pim has a passion for deep exploration. His specialty is helping people overcome shyness and anxiety in order to thrive in all speaking situations.

Just had the most AMAZING lesson from Pim! He is a fantastic teacher, locked right into my style of delivery & quickly came up with game techniques to help me unlock Reliving the Moment. I felt an immense difference from my first story to the last story during our 30 mins. Fantastic recommendation

Alienor Hunter

Alienor sees what most people miss. She has a way of knowing exactly what people need to level up their speaking. Alienor is a lead coach at Ultraspeaking Fundamentals and will give you the precise piece of feedback you need at every step of your journey. Her specialties include confidence, overcoming anxiety, and enjoying speaking.

In my experience, what made Alienor extraordinary is a finely tuned ability to know exactly when and how I needed to be challenged. When she inevitably pushed me outside of my comfort zone, I felt supported by her confidence in me. These were the moments where I felt the most growth.
It's also important to highlight her sense of humor and the abundant joy she brought to each session. At times the work could be tough, yet I remember laughing a lot. In what may be the ultimate compliment to her coaching skills, Alienor managed to make public speaking fun!”

Warm and engaging, Alienor is one of the highlights of my Fundamentals journey. I look forward to joining her classes because they are always fun. More importantly, she encourages me to step out of my comfort zone each week by cleverly adding incremental challenges to the reps. Thank you Alienor!

If you’re interested in one-on-one coaching to prepare for an event or level up your speaking:

What is musicality?

It’s not vocal variety. It’s not the pace of your speech nor the tone of your voice. These are consequences of musicality, but they are not the root.

The root of musicality lies deeper. It’s easy to miss and hard to imitate. You can only discover it for yourself. But when you do find it, something magical happens: you experience the very essence of being alive.

Musicality is a contrast of feelings.

Think about music for a second. There are slow parts and fast parts; quiet parts and loud parts. There’s contrast. Ups and downs. Shifts and swings.

Contrast is what makes great stories. There’s variety. There’s complexity. There’s conflict. Characters laugh, cry, scream — and we can’t help but feel the realness in their emotion.

That’s because emotions are naturally relatable. We all cried as babies. We all had embarrassing days at school. Friendships came and went. Love visited and heartbreak followed. At times we hated our life. Other times we felt lucky to be alive.

We may not always feel the same things. But all of us feel something. Feeling is at the heart of human connection. But when it comes to speaking, sometimes, that connection is broken. Why? Because the feeling is nowhere to be found.

Why do so many people speak without feeling?

Human beings are creatures of feeling, but they don’t always show it while speaking. Why? Maybe they don’t care cre about what they’re saying. Or maybe they do care, but they’re scared of showing it.

That’s valid. When you allow emotion to take over, you may lose control. And sometimes that can be costly. Maybe one time you went too far and said something you didn’t mean. Maybe it blew up in your face and left you feeling exposed, embarrassed, or ashamed of yourself.

As a result, you may have subconsciously started to control things more — to the point where you decided to play it safer in speaking. And in doing so, you may have accidentally narrowed your range, constrained your expression and reduced your speaking to a fraction of its potential.

So how do you reverse the process?

How do you regain your speaking potential without exposing yourself to unnecessary risk? You practice expressing your emotions in a safe space. That way, when you’re under pressure, you’re not experiencing a flood of emotion for the first time. You’ve learned to ride it, re-direct it, and harness it to your advantage.

This is what Ultraspeaking is about. You train letting go. You notice when you’ve gone too far. You practice reigning back in. You feel silly, awkward, and (maybe even) uncomfortable — until one time it finally clicks and you discover that perfect harmony between being in your head and being in the moment.

That’s mastery. The ability to surf between thinking and feeling. The ability to stay in complete control while entirely letting go. When you experience it, you feel alive, at ease, and inflow. You perform at your best, and you don’t even know how you did it.

“Artistic creation, sports, dance, teaching, counseling — mastery in any field of endeavor implies the thinking mind is either no longer involved at all or at least is taking second place. A power and intelligence greater than you and yet one with you in essence takes over. There is no decision-making process anymore.” – Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks

Ultraspeaking exists to give you the space to explore greater self-expression. Your coaches support you. Your classmates want you to succeed. Everyone here is rooting for you.

So, don’t hold back. Experiment. Try. Go beyond comfort. Feel around the edges of awkwardness. Learn something new about yourself. I don’t know what you’ll discover, but in all my experience so far, the one thing I can say with certainty is this: the more you let go, the easier speaking becomes.

Breathing stops rambling

Often when speaking we feel a sense of hurry. We get lost in the details and lose sight of the bigger picture. This can cause us to worry — and instead of taking a moment to pause — we feel anxious and speed up. The result leads to rambling.

Here’s how to solve this:

Every time you catch yourself worrying or feeling lost — stop speaking!

To practice:

1. When someone asks you a question, pause before answering.

2. When you suspect you might be rambling: take a breath.

The magic is in the out-breath.

When you take a breath there are two phases: in and out.

Out is the key to it all.

Notice the moment right after the out breath. For just a second, put every fiber of your focus onto your body. Feel your shoulders drop. Observe your energy relax.

By connecting with your body, you disconnect from the mind. Your brain resets. The rambling stops. The fog clears and the road emerges. You can see where you’re going again.

That’s because clarity comes from silence. And although silence doesn’t feel comfortable at first, it will with practice. The more time you spend in it, the more familiar it will become.

. . .

(the Snowglobe game is a great way to train your pausing)

When you breathe, your listeners relax

The breath is a reminder to ground ourselves before continuing to speak. In the breath, we ask important questions to spark new ideas:

What do I really wanna say here?
What’s important about what I’m saying?
How can I go even deeper?

Our breath serves as a checkpoint. A rest stop. A place to pull over and ask for directions.

The breath settles our mental snow globe.

Breathing gives us a chance to connect with the landscape beyond the snow. The longer we pause , the clearer the image becomes.

Despite these discoveries, many people find the breath uncomfortable. Or unfamiliar. Or simply difficult to do in the moment.

That’s OK. It takes time for a behavior to become a habit. What’s key is awareness. Awareness that the breath is available to you at any moment. Rambling, stumbling, and blanking are all reminders to breathe.

When you breathe, your listeners relax.

People feel better when you breathe. You show them there’s no hurry. They see that you’re in control. They get to sit back and enjoy the extra time to digest the moment. They appreciate you putting care into what you want to say next. They respond by listening with care.

Breathing is fundamental to speaking.

Breathing relaxes us. It grounds us. It gives us space to respond instead of react. And in that space, we discover a new dimension to our speaking.

This week, breathe deeply and breathe often. Don’t wait for a timer. Explore the silence. Connect with your core and discover what lies beyond.

People who pause appear more thoughtful and confident.

That’s because only confident people tend to carry an energy of “un-hurriedness.”

They don’t hurry because they don’t feel rushed — because they have developed the confidence to take their time under pressure.

When we are put on the spot, our nervous energy tends to make us rush through our speaking.

So, when you pause, you give off the opposite impression – a sense of being calm, collected, and in control.

Learning to be comfortable with pauses is the fastest way to look (and feel) more confident. And it’s fundamental to how you perform under pressure.

Pausing is a gift to your listeners.

Pausing allows your audience an opportunity to relax, connect with you, and find meaning in what you’re saying.

Picture a snow globe. When you’re speaking, you’re shaking up the snow globe. The more you speak, the more chaotic the snowstorm.

The audience needs time for the snow to settle.

But every time you stop speaking, the snowstorm calms. The snow settles and a clear landscape begins to emerge from behind.

That’s what happens when you pause. Yours words settle and a deeper meaning begins to emerge.

That’s why the longer you pause, the more important your words become.

Pausing is truly the most powerful tool in speaking.

Musicality is about energy

Similar to great music, great speaking involves both slow and fast parts; quiet and loud sections; funny and serious moments.

The key is in the contrast.

The more you contrast your speed, volume, energy, and intensity, the more dynamic and engaging your speaking will be.

When energy leads, emotions follow, and words fill in the blank.

Just like our mood dictates our behavior, our energy dictates our speaking.

Think about the last time you got overly excited in a conversation.

Did you have trouble getting the words out? Or did they just flow out of you?

When you lead with energy, the words come effortlessly

When we allow ourselves to get angry, excited, passionate, melancholic or pensive . . . the words simply come in the moment.

That’s why the more you feel, the easier speaking becomes

Energy is a portal to new ideas

You know that person who always has something interesting to say?

It’s like they have a portal into original ideas, new thoughts, and an unlimited bank of memories. How do we create these portals for ourselves? Simple. We change energy levels.

Use energy as a portal into new ideas.

Picture each level of energy as a portal into exclusive original content.

Higher levels of energy are portals into fun, vivid, and exciting content.

Lower levels of energy are portals into deep, thoughtful, and meaningful content. And perhaps the most important portal is often the one we use the least: silence.

When you learn to enter different energies on command, you instantly gain access to new portals of creativity and inspiration.

That’s why those who master this skill never seem to run out of things to say.

We tried public speaking in a sauna

Sounds like the beginning of a joke, but oh no.
We put Michael and Tristan to the test, increasing the pressure with every passing second.

They took Ultraspeaking’s game Triple Step and turned the dial ALL the way up the number of words gets longer and the time gets shorter.

Who can outlast the other?
Who will use the ice cube they were offered to keep going?
Who will take home the ultimate bragging rights?

This is HIGH PRESSURE (and high HEAT) competition!

Ultraspeaker vs. Ultraspeaker

This is what happens when two public speaking coaches walk into a sauna!

Watch to find out what happens!

Principles of Ultraspeaking

In Episode 2 of The Ultraspeaking Podcast (Apple | Spotify | Youtube) Tristan and I dive into the essential principles of Ultraspeaking.

In Episode 2 of The Ultras

These principles contain strategies to handle pressure, recover swiftly, and find flow in speaking.

Here’s a brief recap to take with you into the new year:

Principle #1: Speak Before You Think

When you wait too long, doubt will creep in. So trust your gut and start speaking.

As a famous improv teacher once noted: “Don’t wait for great ideas. Trust your first idea and make it great.”

Principle #2: Choose One Thing

What’s the one idea you want to be tattooed into people’s brain? That’s your One Thing.

Navigating speaking gets easier when you have a north star to follow.

Principle #3: Breathe

Getting lost is a natural part of speaking. When in doubt, breathe.

What was your One Thing again? Use the breath to reconnect to what matters most.

Principle #4: Feel What You Say

People don’t listen to words as much as they feel energy and intent.

Be sure to care deeply about what you say. That way, others will too.

Principle #5: End Strong

Doubt creeps in toward the end of speaking. Pay it no mind.